Veil of the Goddess

by Rob Preece

  "We will."

  "You sound more sure than I am."

  "Look around you, Zack. Check out the cave carefully. What do you see?"

  He did as she urged, humoring her, she knew.

  "It's just a cave."

  Maybe she would doubt again. But that would be later, after the fresh memory of a visit from a priestess who had been thousands of years dead before even Peter walked these mountains.

  "This cave has been a holy place. A temple. When we prayed, it answered."

  He looked confused. “I certainly didn't pray to any mythical god."

  "Goddess, I think,” Ivy said. What had Sister Paraclete told her when she'd attended Catholic School in Pennsylvania, at a time when there were still a few nuns among those who taught? Something about the old religions. “I think I met someone from a time when the Queen of Heaven wasn't just Mary, mother of God, but the great Goddess herself."

  "You can't believe that stuff,” he insisted, his voice tinged with fear. “If there's one thing the Bible is clear on, it's that Goddess worship is wrong."

  She didn't want to get into a theological debate with him. “Maybe. But she reminded me of something important."

  "Why am I sure you're going to tell me?"

  "She said, by their fruits you shall know them. She saved us last night, hid us out of sight from the CIA and let us rest. That doesn't sound like evil to me. She's going to save us again today. We're going to make it to Byzantium, and then go on to Venice. That doesn't sound evil, either."

  Zack shook his head. “My priest always said that the Devil could quote scripture. We'd be crazy to go to Byzantium. Besides, it's Istanbul now."

  "She called it Byzantium. And that's where we need to go first. There's something we need to learn there. It's connected to the war in Iraq, and connected to what the Foundation is trying to do."

  * * * *

  Zack collected his Kalasnikov, then hefted the Cross timber over his shoulder. There was no point in trying to argue with Ivy about this. Besides, it didn't matter. They weren't going to get out of these mountains. The solid stone walls of their cave had probably blocked out whatever signals the CIA was using to track them. If they stayed, though, they'd starve. And once they left it, the CIA Predators and the Kurdish pesh merga would be after them again.

  "Let's go."

  Ivy nodded and grabbed her own equipment. “Ready."

  Neither of them should have this much energy. They hadn't eaten in close to forty-eight hours and had spent most of that time on the run. He should be weak, blistered, and ready to quit. Instead, he'd never felt healthier. Not that he would turn down breakfast if anyone offered one to him.

  Ivy trotted out of the cave as if the crosspiece weighed fifty ounces instead of fifty pounds and scanned the area.

  "You see something?” He'd been listening for the telltale whine of the Predator or the sudden silence that might indicate a party of men approaching but had detected no signs of them.

  "Just looking for our way off the mountains."

  "Our way off is attached to the bottom of your legs."

  Ivy frowned. “I don't think we'll make it all the way on foot. Besides, we're in a bit of a hurry. We need to find out who's behind the Foundation, what they're trying to do with the Cross, and what people in the Catholic Church know the real secrets."

  "You're still suffering from those drugs."

  "What drugs? Do you see any remnant of a campfire? You remember seeing that as we approached, right? So, where is it? I'll tell you, we were sent back more than a thousand years into the past. We were safe last night because we weren't here at all. Or rather, we were here, but not now."

  "You're been reading too many fantasy books, Ivy. There's got to be a scientific explanation for what's happened.” He couldn't explain what had happened to Ivy on the Cross, but that didn't mean he was prepared to believe in magic, time travel, and pre-Christian priestesses.

  She shrugged. “There's a lot going on that doesn't fit any science I've ever heard of. That doesn't mean it isn't happening."

  He couldn't argue with her. He stopped wanting to when they came across the battered Jeep five minutes later.

  "Our way off the mountain,” Ivy said. “Right on schedule. I wish I knew her name."

  "The Jeep's?"

  "Very funny. The old priestess's. I'd thank her now."

  "One thing for sure, this jeep doesn't belong to a pre-historic priestess. If we steal it, we'll as good as send a notice to the world that we were here."

  "The pesh merga know we're here. On the long-shot this doesn't belong to the guys hunting us, go ahead and leave them some money. A couple thousand sounds like a fair price. This thing is pretty beat up."

  Unfortunately, they had no choice. Walking through the mountains would take weeks—weeks they didn't have with Kurdish militias and the CIA on their trail. “There must be a road nearby. That Jeep didn't climb the trails we've been following."

  Ivy loaded her Cross section into the Jeep. “Want me to drive first?"

  "I think I can manage."

  She smiled coyly. “There is one thing. Do you know how to hotwire a car?"

  "I grew up in south Dallas."

  "Good. Because I have a feeling we have about five minutes before the militiamen who left this car here head back. And I'd like to be gone when they do."

  Zack peeled a stack of hundred-dollar bills from Smith's stash and laid them under a rock.

  Jeeps hadn't been designed with security in mind and it only took him a few seconds to yank the ignition wires out, slice through the electrical cable with his fighting knife, and spark the engine into a sullen roar.

  "Straight ahead,” Ivy ordered.

  They flashed past a trio of militiamen, their CIA-supplied jungle-camouflage uniforms a poor choice in the rocky gray mountains.

  Ivy waved at them and shouted something about getting supplies.

  One of them, a kid who couldn't be more than sixteen, waved back, his eyes obviously taking in the curvy blonde.

  The others weren't so completely fooled, but by the time they had recognized that it was their Jeep heading toward Turkey, and that these just might be the people they were hunting for, Zack was hundreds of yards past them, accelerating quickly.

  A few M16 rounds clanked off the Jeep's mild steel body, but didn't penetrate anything critical.

  "Piss-poor anti-Jeep weapon,” Ivy grumbled. “I wish I knew why the Army standardized on that piece of junk."

  "Write it up to another miracle,” Zack said. “Like finding the Jeep. Someone up there was looking out for you and knew you'd need to face weapons with no penetrating power."

  "Very funny."

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out the papers he'd collected from Smith's briefcase. “Why don't you take a look at these and see if you can figure anything out. We've been so busy since Smith killed you, neither one of us has had a chance to think."

  She accepted the papers and nodded. “My money says they'll confirm everything the Priestess told me."

  "Why don't you look rather than jump to conclusions."

  "It seems to me that you're the one who's not being open to possibilities. If you believe the Cross brought me back to life after Smith slit my throat, why can't you believe in a three thousand-year-old priestess?"

  It was a fair question—but one he didn't particularly want to face. “I'm still having a hard time with the Cross thing, but I was raised right. If we're fighting against the Christians and being helped by demons, what does that make us?"

  "According to Sister Paraclete, the Bible is a bit ambiguous on other gods. We're not supposed to worship them ahead of God, but that doesn't mean there aren't others, or even that it isn't okay to respect them as long as you don't put them first."

  Zack had never met Sister Paraclete, but he was pretty sure she would have been run out of his Parish on a rail.

  "Read the documents and see what you can find,” he growled. He shifted into
four-wheel drive, splashed through a mountain creek, and headed up the side of a mountain.

  * * * *

  They almost made it.

  Zack figured they were within five miles of the Turkish border when Ivy grabbed his arm. “Stop the Jeep and run."

  He jammed on the brakes and spun out the Jeep, then reached for the Cross.

  "No time for that. Move."

  He followed Ivy as she jumped from the still slowly moving vehicle and ducked under a small stone bridge that might have been built over two-thousand years earlier by Alexander the Great's invading armies, or possibly last year by an ambitious shepherd.

  "What—"

  A missile's shriek put an end to his question. He closed his eyes, but even that didn't block out the white-hot incandescence of the fireball.

  He ducked into the shallow stream of water and held his breath as long as he could.

  Ivy's blue eyes appeared blank when he came up, and her blond hair had been singed.

  "Are you all right?"

  "Ohmigod, I can't see. We're trapped on a goddamned mountain and I'm blind."

  They might survive her blindness, but panic would kill both of them. She'd been so brave for so long, he'd almost thought she was superwoman. Seeing her like this made her like her more, but it could also get them killed.

  "Your blindness is probably temporary. Were you looking at the explosion?"

  "Maybe you should leave me.” she ignored is question. “Continue on to Istanbul and Venice and see what you can learn."

  "What for?” He gestured to the burning Jeep, forgetting she couldn't see. “They destroyed the Cross."

  Ivy shook her head. “Do you think it would have survived the millennia if it was that easy to destroy? Why would the Moslems have hidden it rather than destroying it? It was the ultimate sign of their enemy."

  He could think of plenty of reasons. After all, Islam teaches that Jesus was a great Prophet, even that he was born of a Virgin. Ivy seemed more and more to be living in wishful thinking, just as she'd believed they could escape the CIA's hunters thanks to a drugged dream.

  "I'll get it,” she told him. “I can see well enough for that."

  She was out of the stream and walking toward the burning Jeep before he could react.

  "Get down, Ivy. The Predator is still up there."

  "A Predator is the least of our problems. We need to keep moving. The militia will be here soon."

  She walked into the fire.

  His muscles clenched as he listened for her scream. Of all of the ways to be injured, burning is the most painful. And the Predator's missile was ignited with phosphorous, burning even hotter than the gasoline from the Jeep.

  Her pants brushed against a chunk of burning steel and smoldered, but Ivy kept walking, knelt by two lumps that, impossibly, glowed black into the white inferno of fire, and carried them out.

  Gasoline burned on the surface of the ancient timbers, but the wood itself seemed unaffected. From the depths of the flames, Ivy looked straight at him—and smiled. She could see again.

  He caught his jaw before it hit the ground. She'd walked through flamed unharmed, and her eyesight had been restored.

  He hugged her quickly, using the occasion to check her out, make sure she was all right.

  Other than some damage to her uniform pants, she seemed fine. Which was more than he could say for himself. Zack was a mess.

  He had to accept that the artifact was powerful, capable of protecting itself and healing those who possessed it. No wonder the U.S. military and the mysterious Foundation wanted it.

  Ivy's delusional belief that she'd been contacted by an ancient priestess still bothered him, but he could no longer doubt that they had found the one True Cross. Ivy had been blind, but now she saw. She'd walked, like Shadrach and his friends, into an inferno yet not been burned. Only the True Cross could work the kind of miracles he was seeing. Only the True Cross was likely to generate the kind of interest, to the extent of redirecting the war in Iraq, that the CIA and the Foundation was showing.

  Zack wasn't prepared to believe that anyone in league with the Devil would be able to carry the Cross, or that the power of the Cross would heal anyone evil. Which meant that Ivy was special. But special or not, he hadn't a clue what to do about it. It was his job as an officer to an enlisted soldier to keep her alive. It was his obligation as a man of faith to help her in her quest.

  "I guess we should keep heading for the border,” he said. “Maybe we'll be safer there."

  "Maybe.” Ivy handed over the heavier main section of the Cross, then headed north, toward the border. “I'm afraid the papers from Smith's briefcase didn't survive the fire. They flared up."

  "Probably flash paper."

  She nodded. “Anyway, I did read some before we got hit, but not enough."

  Speaking of getting hit, the CIA had strayed very close to the border in their attack. This part of Kurdistan had far more Turkish presence than it did Kurdish pesh merga. Zack wondered if that meant the CIA or its clients would follow them into Turkey. Would the U.S. risk an international incident with one of their few allies in the area just to stop himself and Ivy? Based on what he'd seen so far, Zack decided they probably would.

  He should have been depressed. He'd lost his job, his future, and his life wasn't worth spit. But the touch of the Cross restored him.

  One bit of good news was—he could no longer see the Predator. Either its remote control pilots had believed their job was done when they'd launched the missile, or they'd returned it to home base for more ammunition. Either way, he and Ivy had a temporary respite. The CIA and the Foundation had proven they were capable of following them. Without the Predator, though, they should have a harder time pinpointing their location to the Kurdish militiamen. Once he and Ivy got away from the huge pillar of smoke that marked their current location, at any rate.

  He used the stream to wash burning gasoline from his Cross section and then hefted it. “Then let's see how far we can get before they find us again."

  He broke into a jog, slowed by the awkwardness of the long timber he carried over his shoulder but not by the weight, which seemed to shrink as he grew more fatigued.

  The Turkish border would be well guarded. Independence-minded Kurds living within Turkey had been a thorn in the Ankara Government's side for decades and the increasingly self-governing Kurdish portion of Iraq created nothing but worry for the Turks. But he and Ivy were well away from the traveled roads.

  Lines drawn on maps didn't mean much in the high mountains. The Turks would use satellites and surveillance aircraft to spot large-scale incursions, but a pair on foot might slip past without being noticed. Unfortunately, so could the small groups of Kurdish militia who'd be chasing them. Of course, the CIA had probably supplied the Turks’ satellites and surveillance aircraft in the first place. Zack was certain they would have put in place backdoors to ensure the Turks wouldn't spot anything the CIA wanted to keep secret.

  Hours later, hunger pangs reminded him that he hadn't eaten in days. His lungs ached from the thin mountain air was surprised to notice the growing darkness as the sun plunged behind the high hills.

  "We've got to stop for the night,” Ivy said. “I've got a feeling there's someplace designed as a refuge around here.” She paused as if casting about for direction, then turned from the northerly direction they'd been following and headed almost due west.

  He followed her, his doubts not supplying any alternative. He knew she'd never been to Turkey before, but she'd led him into the mountains, found the narrow passes that had hid them from the returning Predator, avoided any hint of human habitation.

  Stone walls marked the outcropping of a type of civilization.

  "There are people here,” he whispered. “Even if these are Turkish Kurds, they'll be in contact with the Iraqi Kurds from across the border."

  "I don't think this place is occupied by Kurds.” Ivy gestured toward a building that blended in with the gray slabs of m
ountain stone.

  A sound of bells, church bells, confirmed her guess.

  "Christians?"

  Ivy shrugged. “Seems like they're everywhere. The only question is, will they help us?"

  It was a good question. Made even better by the distant sound of the Predator as it sought traces of them and their cross.

  "I guess we'll have to ask find out,” Zack said, resigned to taking the risk.

  Ivy sniffed the air. “You think they have something to eat?"

  Chapter 5

  The Predator wafted out of sight.

  "Whatever vibes it's picking up from the Cross get confused by the Monastery,” Ivy guessed. “Let's see if they'll let us inside before it comes back."

  Zack glared at the vanishing drone, clearly torn between their knowledge that the U.S. was trying to kill them and his patriotic fear of letting what could be a powerful weapon fall into any hands other than those of his own country.

  "We aren't going to give the Cross to these people,” she reminded him. “We're just asking for sanctuary. Isn't that what churches are supposed to provide?"

  He set the Cross section on the ground and shrugged his shoulders. “Some churches, Ivy. I don't know anything about this church. One thing for sure, they aren't Catholics. I don't even think they're supposed to be allowed here."

  She didn't care if they were Snake Charming Pentecostals, as long as they weren't part of the Foundation. If she and Zack didn't get help, they weren't going to make it much further.

  They waited for a break in the chanting and then Ivy knocked on the wooden door to what she guessed was a sanctuary.

  The bearded man who opened the door frowned at her and muttered something in a language that wasn't English, Arabic, or anything else she recognized.

  "Do you speak English?” she asked.

  "?Usted habla Español?” Zack added.

  "English,” the man grated. “Some.” He wore what looked like an old poncho over his shoulders except it draped all the way to the ground and was tied at his waist by a rope. From the oversized crucifix around his neck, Ivy realized her guess had been right. They had stumbled upon a group of Christians in the middle of Moslem Turkey.